Manxy Tickling Part Two

In spring we identified around one hundred and fifty manx shearwater burrows that contained eggs or adult birds on eggs, this was the start of a study taken yearly to get an idea of the productivity of the manx shearwater. At this time of year there should be chicks in the burrow of a reasonable enough size to ring, weight and measure, so with an army assembled consisting of staff members, volunteers and guests we set out to our study burrows to find hopefully find some active burrows.....

 

The burrow size, shape and depth the chick is at can determine the the method used to extract the bird. Some of them are shallow enough to be able to drag them out by hand but sometimes the chicks are too deep, unless you'v got arms like Mr Tickle.

Here's a picture of Mr Tickle just incase you were deprived of Mr Men as a child

In this case we use a piece of flexible wire with a rubber hook at the end to feel our way down the hole to the chick, hook the leg (sounds easier than it is) and draw the young bird out using that method.

During this period of the young shearwaters life it is being constantly feed by the parents until it grown to an enormous size. The chick will grow larger than the parents and so big it can barely fit through the burrows entrance, the parents will then abandon the young bird who will spend the next few weeks slimming down and replacing its soft downy feathers with its flight feathers, it will then venture out at night to stretch its wings and exercise its flight muscles before making its mammoth journey ending up in south america!!!

Expecting reasonably sized young birds we were all surprised when Steve extracted this tiny chick from a hole.

AWWWW mini manxy

Emma, ringing a young shearwater

Weighing, looks strange having a manxy in a pot but they don't seem to mind

And finally all the details of the birds burrow number, ring number, weight and wing length are noted down, job done!!!